TSA seizes water, lets bombs through

Several people walked into Albany International Airport in Colonie, N.Y., in late June, carry-on bags stuffed full of bomb parts, and strolled to the security checkpoint.

Transportation Security Administration screeners seized every bottle of water from all of them.

Fortunately, it was only a test.

In the surprise inspection, conducted in June, screeners failed five out of the seven tests by missing the fake bomb parts and other prohibited items which federal inspectors attempt to smuggle past TSA screeners.

But they did manage to find all the bottled water.

Paul Varville, the TSA’s security director at Albany International, could not be reached for comment.

Ann Davis, a TSA spokeswoman, declined to discuss the circumstances of the covert test at Albany International.

“We don’t discuss the results because they tend to paint an inaccurate picture of the competency of our work force,” she said. “The tests are designed to be incredibly difficult and TSA does anticipate a fair level of failure.” — Albany Times-Union

The TSA has said that employees who fail these tests are immediately retrained. But Dave Erickson, a former TSA screening manager at Albany International Airport and retired U.S. Army major, says that poor training is precisely the problem.

“I feel bad for the employees because a lot of them are good honest people. But if you’re not trained properly, what can you do?” Erickson wondered.

Erickson was fired in 2004 after only six months on the job. However, just three months earlier he was given glowing remarks describing him as “accurate” and “effective.” It also said he had “significantly improved the security of airline travel.”

“I started to question what type of training program we had and when I spoke out about it, that’s when I had troubles,” Erickson said. — WNYT-TV

Erickson is suing the Department of Homeland Security for being wrongfully terminated from his job.

@ softail–TSA agents make a lot more than $7.00 an hour. Go look it up on USAjobs.com, plus they get Federal benefits and are eligible to apply for other Federal jobs that others (non-federal employees) can’t apply for. I work in an airport and serve several TSA agents in a day (some nice and some not) and believe me they do alright. I work @ a minimum wage job and a part-time tsa agent makes twice as much as I do working full-time.